2023-11-08 Half a Million Satellites in Mega-Constellations—Time for an Evolutionary Conversation
In this blog by Julian Gresser, BBILAN urges that the Space Experiment promoting proliferating Mega-Satellite Constellations has already well passed a tipping point, and a worldwide Evolutionary Conversation to find and restore wise balance is now critical for humanity’s collective survival.
Here are some data:
In 2022, 147 companies and government agencies from 34 countries were operating, launching, or planning satellite mega-constellations. If they were all successfully launched, the total number of satellites would approach half a million, far outnumbering the visible stars. On October 17, 2023, the journal Science, reviewing filings with the International Telecommunication Union, reported that the number of filings and the number of planned satellites have dramatically increased. There are more than 90 filings for constellations of over 1,000 satellites each. Twenty-three have over 5,000 satellites, and eight have over 10,000 satellites. As of December 31, 2022, the number of satellites being planned by 300 companies and governments exceeded one million. In June 2023, E-Space, a single company based in France and founded by Greg Wyler in 2022, filed a plan for a single mega-constellation containing 116,640 satellites.
It is unlikely that the Satellite Experiment will ever reach million satellites at least in our reader’s life time, although some analysts assert that this estimate is worth serious consideration. McKinsey offers this more sober report comparing mega-constellation expectations with reality. Moreover, under the ITU rules satellite companies must meet milestones to preserve their rights to coveted orbital spots, which will impose some restraints on unbridled mega-constellation proliferation.
As a practical matter, we may have already reached or surpassed a pivot point. The probability of a Kessler Syndrome debris catastrophe is highly likely well before 50,000 satellites get launched into orbit.
Heading over a Precipice
The world is rapidly heading over a precipice, and no one in authority apparently cares. Let’s cut to the quick: The satellite industry and its closely coupled wireless telecom complex are being deemed militarily and economically “strategic,” because U.S. control of Space as a whole is considered strategic. For this reason, there is little if any Congressional oversight, few public hearings, or even widespread national or international press coverage, let alone any debate as to the actual security benefits of such a strategy. The term “strategic” is code. It means that the exploration and domination of Space is so important that international and domestic law, indeed ethics, must be set aside in order to allow powerful military and industrial interests unfettered license to extract and maximize profits, and to extend and expand U.S. power and influence in Space. How practically is this being accomplished? The following are current strategies by the U.S. government and the satellite and wireless industry to further destabilize the Space theater of operations:
Separate the Space Experiment from critical national industrial infrastructure. It suits the satellite industry and the military to promote the proliferation of satellites without needing to bother with the complexities and interests associated with national terrestrial infrastructure. (But this is a fiction, because the Satellite Experiment is increasingly tightly coupled with terrestrial infrastructure. See L.Donnan/J. Gresser 2021 Newsweek op-ed; for an October 2023 update, see: PERSPECTIVE: It’s Time to Treat Satellites as Critical Infrastructure.)
All risks must be ignored, understated, or subordinated to the strategic industry promotion plan, even though these risks are well known, documented, and the subject of ongoing administrative citizen’s action before the FCC. (See BBILAN/HTTI March 2021 FCC Rulemaking Petition.)
Some risks are actually being presented as convenient self-fulfilling prophesies, such as the inevitability of a war in Space with China in the next 3-5 years. Space has already become a new theater of war.
Present laws and regulations must be ignored, relaxed, or repealed by implication or active defiance. The best example is the FCC’s continuing assertion of a Categorical Exclusion for the licensing program under NEPA, when the risks are measurably and palpably far greater today from 1986 when the Categorical Exclusion was first asserted; other examples include the International Liability Convention on Space, national infrastructure policy, export controls, and cybersecurity protections.
New laws are being enacted to accelerate the Space Experiment, stripping away existing protections, and imposing an arbitrary a shot clock for “deemed ministerial approval” of new satellite applications, mimicking in many instances the ill-advised present Congressional and newly enacted state laws (See California’s AB 965 which Governor Newsom just signed) bills to promote and subsidize by lax regulation the wireless telecom industry. Below is a partial list of bills currently before the Congress that are being rushed through with no public hearings, public knowledge, or debate.
HR 1338—Satellite and Telecommunications Streamlining Act
HR 1339—Precision Agriculture Satellite Connectivity Act
HR 5017—Space Infrastructure Act
HR 5431—Space SSA Transition Act of 2023
HR 675—Secure Space Act of 2023
S 1425—Satellite Cybersecurity Act
S 1648—Launch Communications Act
S 1483—SPACE Act
S 447—ORBITS Act of 2023
The effect of all these policies, administrative actions, and proposed laws is to elevate the interests of the satellite industry, its proponents in the military, and the allied wireless telecom industry, over the interests of other government agencies, those members of Congress who take the time to inform themselves (and their constituents), and the national and international public—without transparency, public hearings and discourse, or even informed press coverage. There is no advocate or discerning voice for wise balance anywhere.
An Evolutionary Conversation
Albert Einstein famously observed that we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking used to create them. To which we urge: Nor can we solve today’s problems with the same set of values that engendered them. The core premise of the Space Experiment is based on the essential values of extractive capitalism begun in the early the 19th century which the writer Amitav Ghosh ably describes in The Nutmeg’s Curse.
At the core of at extractive capitalism is one central and transcending value proposition: Might Makes Right. In practical terms this means:
Powerful commercial and industrial interests have a right to advance their agendas and injure the public for their profit and to benefit the corporate entities they represent. It follows that:
Information on risks must be ignored, downplayed, or reframed.
There is no incentive, much less any interest, to know, discern, or explore alternatives. This misfeasance and abdication of government responsibility is part of a larger societal trend, not confined to satellites.
The Satellite Experiment is being described to the public by the industry and its government sponsors as if it involved a “tragic choice.” The core proposition, in which public support is being enlisted, is that national security will be jeopardized if there is any probing debate or discourse on the risks, which actually are clear, foreseeable, and mitigatable, as the GAO has made clear in two reports issued in September and November 2022.
In fact, the characterization of the tragic choice is a false choice. The international community can avoid chaos in Space if it exercises a collective will to avoid it.
The Satellite and associated wireless telecom industries are taking advantage of a paucity of visionary and informed evolutionary leadership at the state, national, and international levels.
So what might be some essential questions to begin an Evolutionary Conversation on the Satellite Experiment at all levels of civil society within the U.S. government, international organizations, and a concerned public? Here are a few inquiries that can open this dialogue:
How valid are the controlling assumptions of the tragic choice?
Who will benefit if most people accept these false premises without careful inquiry and debate?
Why should the public and the living environment be asked to bear all the risks and (off balance sheet) costs of the Satellite Experiment?
What values will help us live more peacefully, compassionately, resiliently, and in harmony with Nature in a way that is also protective of future generations? For example, interdependence, wisdom, beauty, forbearance, discernment, generosity, kindness, compassion, integrity, resilience, and a large number of related values that have been recognized and embraced by most of the world’s great spiritual traditions and indigenous peoples around the world.
What steps can the U.S. and other governments immediately take to advance these Evolutionary Values?
How might the exploration of Outer Space and the Satellite Experiment practically embody and advance these Evolutionary Values?
We predict with great confidence that if the key government and international decision makers of the world who are concerned with the Satellite Experiment, including the captains of the satellite industry, encourage and participate in this Evolutionary Conversation, a far safer, wiser, innovative, and more compassionate path for the Satellite Experiment will emerge. It will be so clear that some may say they envisioned it all along.
Practical Next Steps
Senators Brian Schatz and Tammy Duckworth took the inspired initiative in 2021 to request the GOA in the Congress to prepare a Report on the risks of debris and mitigation strategies from the FCC’s licensing program. The GAO complied and in September and November 2022 publishing two excellent reports. No constructive action appears to have been undertaken to follow up on the professional work of the GAO. Acting on behalf of the Healthy Heavenly Trust Initiative, BBILAN wrote a letter to Senators Schatz and Duckworth suggesting Congressional Briefing on the GAO Report and citing BBILAN’s White Paper based on a meeting with two GAO directors and staff who authored the Report. As of this writing, a Congressional Briefing would be strongly advisable, especially in light of the spate of satellite related bills cited in this blog post.
The FCC never responded to two Petitions filed by BBILAN in 2020 and 2021, the first in April 2020 addressing blanket licensing of millions of satellite base and earth stations. The second filed in March 2021 called for comprehensive programmatic assessment of eight domains of serious risks, and revocation of the FCC’s Categorical Exclusion.
It is high time to revisit these two actions, which were prescient when filed and even more urgent today.
© Copyright Julian Gresser, November 2023. Many of the themes in this blog are explored in greater detail in the author’s autobiography: How the Leopard Changed Its Spots—Evolutionary Values for an Age in Crisis. Examples of Evolutionary Conversations can be found at: www.justclick.org. The views expressed in this article are those of Julian Gresser and are not necessarily those of BBILAN or its supporters.